Governor Jesse Ventura endorses Kevin Barrett for Congress

Posted:
Thursday, September 4, 2008 3:45 PM EDT

MADISON (WKOW) -- From Kevin Barrett:

Former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura has endorsed Dr. Kevin Barrett's congressional candidacy in Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, right across the Mississippi from Governor Ventura's home in Minnesota.

The endorsement came during an in-person conversation before Governor Ventura's speech at Ron Paul's Rally for the Republic Tuesday afternoon, and was re-affirmed by telephone Thursday morning.

Ventura, who won as a candidate independent of the two-party duopoly, in 1998, applauded Barrett's decision to run as a third party candidate, saying "I'd like to use the quote of the late, great Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia said once that if you're made to pick the lesser of two evils, you're still picking evil, aren't you?" Ventura said that non-major-party candidates can win: "We're a majority! Thirty percent are Democrats, thirty percent are Republicans, forty percent are us, yet we have no-one representing us. Why not? It can be done. I proved it. I beat the two-party system in Minnesota, and I hope Kevin Barrett will do the same thing in Wisconsin."

Ventura said he liked Barrett's "New Libertarian" philosophy: "I'm a libertarian with a small L. The Libertarian party...some of them are anarchists! I remember getting booed at a Libertarian convention because I supported the government being involved with transportation. They booed me. I said, 'how did you get here?' If you drive on a road, it was because the government is involved with transportation. If they privatized the roads, there would be toll booths every 500 feet!"

Ventura also endorsed Barrett's demand that the troops be brought home immediately, and sympathized with Barrett's views on 9/11. The former Minnesota Governor said that as a former Navy Seal trained in demolitions, he does not believe the government's story that fire brought down the three World Trade Center skyscrapers--only two of which were hit by planes. Ventura questioned the nature of the collapses, which went straight down at near-free-fall speed. "If they really think that happened, they can test that by starting a fire in a skyscraper and seeing if it suddenly collapses," Ventura said.